Radio Free Enterprise

Just two weeks ago I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, This Week In Tech with Leo Laporte.

Leo was interviewing a young man named Justin Kan, star of his own lifelong version of The Truman Show on Justin.tv. Justin’s claim to fame? He’s made a commitment to LifeStreaming - providing live Internet video of everything that happens in his life 24/7 from a camera mounted on his head. Sound like fun?

Beyond the obvious privacy and logistical issues, the technology Justin had to cobble together was nothing short of daunting - and expensive. But that was two weeks ago, an ice age in Internet time. Today anyone can do the same thing Justin is (if they care to), with no hassle, at no charge and in no time.

UStream.tv allows anyone with a digital video camera (webcam on up) and a high-speed Internet connection to stream their images live to hundreds of viewers worldwide at no charge.

Just like YouTube and other sites which allow the free posting of pre-recorded videos, UStream.tv will no doubt be filled without a great deal of dubious content. But the opportunity for business owners, sales professionals and business groups to broadcast their live events to the world via streaming video is profound.

And the potential to leverage UStream.tv as an Education-Based Marketing medium is also enormous. I’ll be very interested to see where this new channel takes us in the coming months and years.

Here’s a sweet business model for you: a cereal bar - and cafe.

Cereality is a Chicago-based company that offers a Starbucks-like experience for lovers of name-brand hot and cold cereals.

Nice tag line!

Though they only have five locations open so far, this is a company with plans for large-scale expansion through franchising and licensing agreements with universities, airports, theme parks and convenience stores. They also offer catering and an online store!

Cereality locations serve name-brand cereals like Cheerios and Cocoa Puffs in waxboard containers of the kind the local Chinese restaurant sends your Kung Pao chicken home in. You add the liquid of your choice from a dispenser and commence to crunch.

I can’t say whether Cereality is profitable or if the concept has the potential for long-term growth and sustainability. But, if the nearly century-long success of breakfast cereals is any indicator, you can expect to see one of their locations opening on a streetcorner near you sometime very soon.

Ted Turner’s father made his fortune in billboards - the widely despised and widely dispersed giant canvasses of commercialism dotting the highways and bi-ways of this fair land.

Ted took over the firm - then worth approximately $1 million - upon his father’s suicide in 1963. The rest, as they say, is history.

To this day, Turner Outdoor is still a huge cash cow, churning out millions of profits for Time Warner every year - and getting progressively more profitable due to the latest in digital signage technology which allows a single billboard to display multiple ad images every minute.

But that ain’t all. Through wired and wireless Internet connections, hundreds of signs of all sizes in locations ranging from roadsides to retail points of sale, can be controlled and monitored from a single location. Awesome!

This article explains how an advertising medium which had been written off for dead just ten years ago is making a huge comeback thanks to the creative application of digital technology.

I’m not sure whether Jott is revolutionary or evolutionary but I do know that I will be using this amazing new service from this day forward.

Jott combines telephony, voice messaging, voice recognition, email and an online-accessible database to create an amazingly simple yet powerful communication medium that every business owner can put to immediate use.

Here’s how this free service works: You call a toll free number and a robotic female voice asks, “Who do you want to Jott?” You respond “Me.” After a tone, you dictate your message to yourself, then pause to indicate you are finished. In a few seconds the voice says “Got it!” and then you hang up. Shortly thereafter you receive an email with a text transcription of your message along with a link to play the original recording.

You can Jott messages to yourself, to individuals and to groups. For example, in less than 30 seconds with a single toll-free call to Jott, a sales manager can inform his entire team that the sales meeting has been rescheduled.

The Jott web site does a great job of explaining how the system works and the ways that people are using it. It’s easy to register and import your entire contact database.

I’m going to be using Jott to send myself reminders, email customers and vendors, schedule meetings - and a thousand other things - every time it occurs to me, even when I’m on the road.

Just came across this comprehensive list of terms used in private equity and venture capital transactions.

It covers everything from Accredited Investor to Weighted Average Antidilution.

This document is another excellent example of Education-Based Marketing from a site called VCExperts.com You can download the glossary as a Word or html document or refer to it online.

VCExperts.com makes their money by providing information, training and publications targeting people on every side of a private equity transaction. They claim to have over 50,000 users per month.

I can tell you from my own experience that being able to speak the language of private equity is critical for anyone “venturing” into the world of venture capital. You don’t want to find yourself across the table from a Type A investment banker or VC, not being able to track what they are saying. With that having been said, understanding their lexicon is only your first challenge!

Nonetheless, this glossary and VCExperts.com appear to be great resources for you to tap into.